Good morning,

I am beginning to think that Sneaky Pete (our Cooper’s hawk) is making a game out of eating all of my buddies. I caught him sneaking beside the shed just waiting for Tippy the Douglas squirrel to come in and get one of his peanuts, in a flash he almost tagged him off the log ahhh then the little guys looks at me like Do something ! HaHa He doesn’t care if I’m even standing there anymore and he is succeeding in cleaning out my forest. But the other animals are still working together to come up with ways of notifying each other and me when he sneaking around. I have stopped feeding only to find them sitting in the trees waiting and realizing they have nowhere else to go so I become very creative in getting them food and cover.

I still have a large group of Bushtit and they are so small and cute so I am putting out the suet in hard to reach locations. I have Red wing blackbird’s now, which have figured a way to land on the suet log for Woody and like to eat it along with the stellar jays, black-capped chickadee’s and many more. Our temperatures are staying above normal so the buds on the trees are blooming and believe it or not Freddy the frog is starting to croak goodness it’s only January!

Woody and Momma are close but they can not come in right now until this Hawk is gone. Once the leaves return they will have a much better ability to come in. My need to keep a barrier along the fence line has caused some easy access during the winter, along with the deer which I can see come in at night and sit by the back shed and that have helped clear the overgrowth .

More of the forest is gone and I have a view of the mountain now, it is pretty but if you could see the amount of forest that’s now gone in just 6 months it’s heartbreaking. They just looked 70 acres behind us in the middle of homes and it’s a gigantic wrecking yard 😳 yep tore down a forest and filled it with wrecked cars full of oil gas and all things non environmental. I’m pretty sure there were other areas where so much wasn’t lost for the greed of just a few but that would have required a conscience and the ability to think beyond ones self and that is not happening anymore. So I will stay here and do my best to save this small corner of nature and hope that others around the world will too.